Mr Vandervelde's Lectures: One Fine Summer's Day

These are five pieces of non-fiction writing under the name of a fictional character. They’re printed as an appendix to The Lion of Sole Bay, but perhaps they can also have an independent existence as promised in my Authors Electric blog today Here’s the first of them.

The Sole Bay Lectures by M.W. Vandervelde

Number 1 'One Fine Summer’s Day'

 28 May 1672, Sole Bay, Suffolk                (this can also be expressed as 7th June 1672, new style)

An east wind was a Dutch wind. A light breeze in the early morning haze of a fine summer’s day. A wind that would die fitfully throughout the morning leaving the sea ‘smooth as a bowl of milk … the fairest day we have seen all this summer before’. This east wind brought Admiral Michiel de Ruyter and seventy-five ships of the United Provinces reaching across the North Sea to Suffolk.

Our Suffolk coast is a lee shore with an east wind blowing. The ninety-three ships of the combined English and French fleets had last seen Admiral de Ruyter more than a week ago dodging in and out of the channels around Oostende and Nieuwpoort, off the coast of Flanders where they couldn’t follow him. He'd done his best to use false lights to lure them in but they were wary of the wrecking shoals. And rightly so: their ships were deeper than his and they didn’t have the local knowledge.

Now they were lying at anchor in Sole Bay taking on fresh water and provisions. This was a job that took time when you'd 34,000 men to feed.

There'd been visitors to and from the shore, sociability withinthe fleet.The French were anchored furthest south, off Dunwich and Aldeburgh: the two English squadrons were off the town of Southwold. Many of the men had slept the night in the alehouses or were busy ferrying supplies from the shore: the Prince, flagship of the Red squadron, with the king’s brother, the Lord High Admiral, James Duke of York on board, was heeled over onto her side being careened.

A fresh breath of this east wind in the early hours of the morning brought a scout ship running in, her top-gallant sails flying and her guns firing to sound the alarm. Behind her the horizon was a-prickle with the masts and sails of the Dutch fleet, smugly to windward in the morning light.

The French set off south-east, with the tide but against the wind, struggling to comply with a plan that they would lead the fleet. Meanwhile the Lord High Admiral decided to reverse the order of battle. Both squadrons of English ships set sail northwards, clawing away from the coast with the wind on their starboard side. Somehow he forgot to tell the French.

The Blue squadron was already the furthest north. It should have brought up the rear but now it was in the vanguard. Admiral of the Blue, the Earl of Sandwich, on board the hundred-gun, newly-built Royal James, was old and tired and ready to die. His captain, Richard Haddock, set the headsails, ordered the anchors weighed and set off as briskly as the breeze would allow. The Royal James had been anchored in the deeper water furthest from the coast. She was therefore the first to be surrounded. 

It was 7 a.m. and the Royal James was under heavy attack. She was fighting off two of the three Dutch admirals, their seconds and two fireships. The Groot Hollandia  was rammed under her bows, struggling to board. The sea around the Royal James began to boil with musket shot. 250 to 300 of the 800 men on board were killed or wounded in the first hour and a half.

The sound of gunfire reverberated across the smooth water and the morning air was filled with smoke. There was so little wind to blow it away that each ship became its own shrouded island of death and killing. In such conditions it was hard to tell friend from enemy. Sir John Kempthorne,  second in command of the Blue squadron, saw the Groot Hollandia grappled against the Royal James but thought it was one of theirs. 'By reason of the great smoke we could not discern the contrary.”' He sailed past and was soon busily dealing with dangers of his own.

The admiral sent a message to the next in command, Sir Joseph Jordan, ordering him to come and help. Sometime after ten o’clock that morning the desperate men of the Royal James saw Sir Joseph and several smaller ships passing by to windward 'very unkindly'. They realised there would be no rescue. They were on their own.

At last, at about twelve o’clock, the tide turned. Captain Haddock had been shot in the foot. His shoe was full of blood and he was going below for treatment  when he spotted an opportunity to use the tide to separate the ships. He ordered a stern anchor to be dropped and told his men to start hacking away at the tangle of boarding lines and rigging that bound them to their enemy. The Royal James stayed anchored where she was and the Groot Hollandia drifted away on the ebb, her decks heaped with dead men.

Captain Haddock carried on giving orders as the surgeons hacked away at his shattered flesh and tendons. The crew were to hoist the mainsail, pull the anchor up again, get the ship sailing. There was, however,  no final escape for the Royal James. A Dutch fireship grappled from the stern and she was set ablaze. Most of the rest of the crew were burned or drowned.

In the centre of the battle the Dutch were attacking the Prince, flagship of the Red squadron, with the Lord High Admiral, James Duke of York, on board. Seven ships surrounded her, led by Admiral de Ruyter in his flagship De Zeven Provinciën. No help came to the Prince, either, as she kept them at bay hour after hour with her heavy guns. Her captain was killed, the main topmast crashed down, the deck was a chaos of rigging and broken spars. It was impossible to manoeuvre such a badly damaged vessel. Her new captain  ordered rowing boats to begin towing her closer to the rest of the squadron while the Duke of York shifted himself and his flag to the St Michael. The Dutch attack soon shifted with him.

Once the tide had turned all the combatants were being carried north wards. The Duke of York’s pilot, who had moved with him to the St Michael, warned him that they would run aground on the sands off Lowestoft – 'which were the last words that he spoke for he was immediately slain'. The wind was backing north-east, so both fleets, laboriously, put about and continued to batter each other throughout the afternoon as they sailed slowly south again.

The sound of their guns could be heard for miles; doors and windows shook in their frames but the watchers along the coast could see nothing except smoke and dim shapes. Only the Dutch war artists, shifting nimbly through the fleets in their small galliot, had any wider perspective on the action.

 By now the St Michael had six feet of water in her hold and looked likely to sink.  James Duke of York had to move himself and his admiral’s flag to the London.

The battle continued through the long afternoon and into the summer’s evening until at last, the sun set and the wind and waves began to rise and Admiral de Ruyter took his fleet back across the North Sea. The English and French followed him, hoping to fight again on the next day or the day after that. But first there was fog and then the wind blew so strongly that the big ships couldn’t use their topsails or roll out their lower tier of guns. They spent a third day at sea, anchored off the Galloper  Sand 'in the gusty, cloudy, blowing weather' until their scouts reported that the Dutch were tucked away behind the Oosterbank, one of de Ruyter’s favourite lurking places.

There was nothing more they could do. The wind was blowing north north-east 'a stout gale'. Finally they admitted defeat and sailed north-west back to the coast of Suffolk.